Political Capital » Pat Buchananhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital
Politics blog featuring the latest news and analysis from Washington and the US. Political editors provide insights & data about today’s politics.Thu, 07 Aug 2014 19:48:32 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2Romney 2016: Buchanan Says Whyhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-08-04/romney-2016-buchanan-says/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-08-04/romney-2016-buchanan-says/#commentsMon, 04 Aug 2014 13:23:06 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=137213Pat Buchanan, whom many will remember as one of the more extremist candidates to run for president in modern times, says mainstream America may be ready for Mitt Romney one more time. “The establishment Republican Party is seeing that Chris Christie may not be able to do it, and that Jeb Bush does not look […]

Pat Buchanan, whom many will remember as one of the more extremist candidates to run for president in modern times, says mainstream America may be ready for Mitt Romney one more time.

“The establishment Republican Party is seeing that Chris Christie may not be able to do it, and that Jeb Bush does not look like he’s in fit running condition,” Buchanan said in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this morning.
“I think they’re looking to Romney because they’re looking for a candidate they think can move outside the red state base and move blue states, possibly,” he said on the show where he once served as a political commentator.

Buchanan, who worked as an adviser, speechwriter and communications director for a few Republican presidents — Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan — says he sees something of his first boss in the Romney revival model.

“My view, though, is that though Romney is sort of the Nixon in the sense that he is a candidate who has lost two times, or three times, whatever, and he is considered a loser, however he is considered presidential material and I think a lot of people are looking at him because they think he’s the only guy who can go the distance.”

“There’s a lot of folks out there saying if one of the Tea Party folks wins, or one of the hard-line conservatives or libertarians say win we’re not going to win the election — he’s one of the few guys who can do it.[

Buchanan,who was a Tea Partier before there was one, a past and present commentator on this and other cable news networks, knows whereof he speaks when he speaks of political positions that have played to the Tea Party or libertarians yet not to the middle-ground voter critical to presidential elections. He ran for president in 1992, challenging the incumbent President George H.W. Bush with a platform of reining in immigration and opposition to abortion and gay rights.

He later rejoined party ranks and delivered a speech about the great cultural war at the 1992 Republican National Convention. The change that Bill and Hillary Clinton were advocating, he said, “is not the kind of change we can abide in a nation we still call God’s country.”

Buchanan ran again in 1996 and 2000, leaving the Republican Party for the Reform Party — and thanks to the infamous butterfly ballots in Palm Beach County, Florida, managed to claim some Democratic-rich condo precincts.

Buchanan’s experience running on the fringes of American politics may well have informed his current theory about Romney, the sort of candidate he would have been more likely to oppose, or even challenge, in the past. His theory also has a certain resonance in the title of his new book about Nixon: “The Greatest Comeback.”

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-08-04/romney-2016-buchanan-says/feed/0Nixon Wouldn’t `Pussyfoot’ at Cliffhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-01-10/nixon-wouldnt-pussyfoot-at-cliff/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-01-10/nixon-wouldnt-pussyfoot-at-cliff/#commentsThu, 10 Jan 2013 20:40:18 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=61459Richard Nixon’s friends turned out for his 100th. Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and former Sens. Fred Thompson and Elizabeth Dole were among the politicos who turned out last night to celebrate Nixon’s centennial. Hosted by the Richard Nixon Foundation, the cocktail reception and dinner at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington brought out old Nixon […]

Buchanan, Nixon’s onetime speechwriter and a candidate for president in his own time, said he and other associates have been fielding calls from a Nixon-hostile press about Watergate around this centennial because they have nothing else to talk about.

Thayer Capital chairman Fred Malek, who is helping the foundation and Nixon Library raise its goal of $25 million for its centennial legacy campaign, said that the 37th president would take a very Nixonian approach to the fiscal cliff negotiations.

“He would be knocking heads together. He wouldn’t pussyfoot around.”

The evening ended with guests eating a birthday cake modeled after the house Nixon was born in.